


Always the Fire

by fannishliss



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gallifrey, Gen, Post-Time War, Sanity and Insanity, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:46:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5581081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Romana is trapped behind the Time Lock and thinks about the Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always the Fire

**title: Always the Fire**  
author: [](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/)**fannishliss**  
rating: G, gen  
characters: Romana, the Master, the Doctor  
genre: angst!  
1352 words

Summary: Romana is trapped behind the Time Lock and thinks about the Doctor.

For [who@50](http://who-at-50.livejournal.com/) this month we are meant to contemplate **Four**.  This story is from Romana's point of view as she remembers him, as well as other incarnations of the Doctor, probably mostly **Seven, Eight** , and a tantalizing glimpse of **Ten**.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concrit.  You may pm if you wish!  The fate of Romana and of Gallifrey is fairly complicated, so l'd love your thoughts on whether I've mucked it up!!

====  
  
Sheets of fire hang in the sky like a blinding red-gold aurora, except that the fire is caught, motionless, a ravening beast frozen in the act of springing, a primitive infrared snapshot of solar flares, a tourist's postcard of star death.

"Having a blast -- wish you were here!"

Romana can perfectly recall the sound of his voice, of course, and can easily extrapolate the flip human phrases he'd fire off just to annoy her.

How she longs for that brief flare of annoyance, that overwhelming joy that always followed whether she wanted it or not, the joy of just breaking free and being in his company, madman that he was.

How she longs for the impossibility of breaking free.

How she longs for him.

Always the Fire, always the same, the longing, the Fire, the same, same, same.

...

Some of the Shobogans and offworlder servants now worship the Conflagration.  Romana understands their urge to invest it with meaning even as she pities them.  She remembers the old Earth god, the Cosmic Dancer, whose whirling limbs embrace creation, destruction, transformation. If only the Rain of Fire would breathe -- whether to inspire or consume, at least there would be change.

Destroyer of Worlds, KA FA-RAQ GA-TRI,  the hated voices blare unbidden from her memory.  Destroyer of worlds -- she'd always dismissed the hateful epithet, brushing aside the ring of truth it hummed through her time senses -- till she lived the truth of it unchanging inside the void of the Time Lock.

Unchanging, unchanging.  How long can she last before she joins them, the ranks of her colleagues crumbling into madness?

The Fire, the longing, always the same!

She feels the shriek growing inside her, never sure whether she could recover from letting it out, never knowing if this might be the breaking point, the moment of devolution from sanity to psychosis.

"You're not going mad, Romana -- you're going sane in a mad universe!"

She can almost hear him.  If not for the void, the deep, soul-empty silence where his presence should be, she could almost hear him.

"Jelly baby?" he would say, playful, concerned.

Tears in her eyes.  Tears -- like a primitive, like she was fresh off the loom!

Like anyone was fresh off the loom anymore, ha, not since Rassilon, reincarnate and lusting for Ascension, broke all the Looms, so no other spirit from the Matrix could follow him through.  Shocking (shameful) that she managed to avoid execution.  Murmured assent, apparent collaboration.  No possibility of revolt when the Fire hung around them and the Matrix enwebbed them with Rassilon at its center.  Biding her time, Time Lady, covering her eyes and trying so very hard not to be seen.

Until, at last, she had been seen-- for just one, shining moment -- the veil pierced, Rassilon's horrific scheme so close to fruition -- till another madman, or two, turned the tables.

Not mad but sane, in a mad universe.

But if the universe is mad, does that make madness sanity?

In a world trapped in a void, what is an asylum, what is a prison?  What is the office of Madame President, restored?

What are sorrowful brown eyes, a cropped golden head, the constant murmuring of schoolboy bywords, an old enemy fractured, partly redeemed?

What is that numbness in her hearts, that skinned-over, seared-white brand, where for one blazing moment, through the pierced veil and the blaze of immolation, she'd felt his beloved presence, and his voice had been real in her head:

"Romana?"

...

Every moment, she monitors a void, her Time senses aching as she gasps for a sustenance she cannot find in this claustrophobic pocket of unreality.

She monitors the void for any chinks, the tiniest crack -- but is she wary of the breach or hoping for escape? She knows the truth.

She monitors a madman, slowly rebuilding his sanity within an obscene emptiness even the sanest Time Lord can't hope to tolerate for long.  She has to admire the strength he's cobbled together from defeat after defeat, death after death, clinging so hard to life while their mutual "friend" throws his lives away like the mayfly humans amongst whom he persists in gadding about.

She no longer knows whether she is clinging to life, or whether her dreams are the whispery voices, calling from the Matrix, like his Cousins who went down into the dirt under Lungbarrow, emptied skulls grinning in the darkness.

Dreams, now, memories, are no less real than the unreality through which they make their rounds.  Fire in the sky -- no moon, no suns, no stars, no universe, no vortex -- the emptiness beyond the Fire howls in her head.

…

Was there ever a moment more real:

~reclining in a boat as they punt through Oxford, laughing in the sunlight~

~his eyes on her back, caressing her farewell as she walks into a new life~

~his long legs stretched out across the featureless floor of his hot-wired TT capsule, losing at chess against his own pet robot, bright eyes glancing careless through a curtain of brown curls, his casual coats and waistcoats and hats and scarves shielding his exquisite sensitivity from casual contact~

~until one day he throws off the coat, bares his throat to her, casually brushes her hand~

Time does not flow here, now, not any more.  But then, it swirled about them with all its hypnotic, perilous potentiality.

Time was, then, there was no end to possibility.

Time was, then, there were lives and lives to spare.

Now, it's all bound up in a moment, no room for hatred or regret, just the bottomless aching longing and the ever-present threat of insanity, burning at the boundaries of her mind like the binding Conflagration.

...

She goes to visit the madman, as she will now and again.

She finds him trimming a miniaturized silver tree.  The trees no longer thrive in the blasted forests of the Southern Mountains.  His hands are gentle and slow with the pruning knife.  The song of the tree is serene as he tends it.

"Do you miss him?"

His deep brown eyes roll to hers, and slowly focus.

"I would eat his heart in the marketplace!" he whispers, so tenderly, the tears come and she is in public, but she reaches out and touches the bare face of the madman, the chaos swirling there, rhythmless, beatless, it's so like her own pain, she could almost bow down and put her forehead to his---

\--but she doesn't.

Pulls back.

Resumes her mantle.

Coolness is her mantra, patience is her own inner fire.

"Peace be with you, Koschei," she offers and sends him what little metta she has to spare.

"Thank you, gracious Lady," he offers with a delicate smile, and that is one civilized interchange more that they have managed.

He goes back to trimming his tree and she goes back to her office.

She imagines herself turned out, her roots carefully combed, her limbs carefully wired into gracefully twisting arcs, and she wonders at his sanity, that he can grasp the knife without it turning.

She remembers when the Southern Forests burned, the memories and lives in the leaves dissipating into choking clouds of smoke, and then to nothing, and the tiny ornamentals, the palace trees, and the circumscribed copses in sheltered parks, rang with paeans of grief.

Grief is old now, even without Time to mark its passing.

...

The Shobogans and offworlder servants lumber on, their singular lives little different to before, except that so much has been broken, and all must make do, with no hope of replacement or repair.  Making do, as the Fire hangs above, till some voice from beyond wakes the world, or it burns.

In dreams, in memories, in her imagination, she hears him mangle her honorable name, his lighthearted mockery singeing her serenity:

"Romanadvoratrelundar -- I'll call you Romana."

"Doesn't that mean 'fish'?"

"I'm sure it does somewhere.  Come along, Romana!"

~swimming through a soothing lake, robes thrown away, water calm and cool against her skin -- overhead the sky would be Earth blue and a simple yellow sun would glitter upon the surface of the waves~

so she waits

cool as she can muster

patient, as if laid out, awaiting the knife

abiding beneath the Fire

until

"Romana?"

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
